The Sword of Cephas
by Wilusa
Summary: A carnival freak's explanation of his strangeness is pure invention...or is it?


DISCLAIMER: Carnivale and its canon characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.

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"I bear the only true stigmata," said the freak. His soft voice transformed what could have been a boast into a whispered confidence. The dozen or so rubes gathered around his pallet had to lean close even to hear him, let alone see what was under the dressing a woman was removing from the left side of his belly.

The freak winced in pain as the dressing came away.

The rubes gave a collective gasp at the sight of the angry wound...which was oozing _blue_ blood. The woman, whom they guessed to be the freak's mother, quickly covered it again.

"The color o' that blood proves it ain't nothin' normal," he told them. He struggled to sit up, and the woman half-lifted him. "I've been blessed by receivin' a wound like the one in Yeshua's side."

Three voices queried, " 'Yesh'-who?"

The woman, who had till then been tight-lipped - though clearly unhappy - said, "Jesus. He insists on callin' him Yeshua. I reckon Jesus is his name in English, an' Yeshua was his name in, uh, Jewish."

"Don't matter what you call him," one of the rubes said thoughtfully, addressing the freak rather than the woman. "But if you claim you got stigmata, where are yer other wounds? From the nails in his hands an' feet?"

"Yeshua warn't never nailed to the cross," the freak told them. "The Bible got it wrong. The cross was really a crossbeam nailed to a tree - that's where nails came in. Yeshua's hands an' feet were tied to it." Ignoring the startled murmurs that greeted that statement, he continued, "But the wound in his side was important. That's what caused his death."

The murmurs increased. "You're claimin' that Roman guy's spear killed him?" a man blustered. "That ain't what the Bible says! The crucifixion killed him, an' the Roman just stuck his spear in him to prove he was dead."

The freak shook his head. "The Bible's wrong there, too," he said quietly. "Longinus - that was the Roman officer's name - killed him, as an act o' mercy, to give him a faster death. It took guts for Longinus to go against his orders. But he was a good, kind young man. He looked up at Yeshua, an' sensed that Yeshua wanted him to do it. It was only after he'd done it that he understood why...

"There's a legend about it, but the legend's got the facts mixed up. It claims Longinus was goin' blind, an' when Yeshua's blood splattered in his eyes, he was cured. Now I ask you, does it make sense that the Romans woulda had an officer there who was half-blind? 'Course not! But his killin' Yeshua did 'open his eyes' in another sense...helped him see the truth about Yeshua, and about himself." After a beat, he added the enigmatic words, "An' blood had a lot to do with it."

"How do you know all this stuff?" someone demanded.

Ignoring another rube's mumbled "He's just makin' it up," the freak said piously, "I received the knowledge along with the stigmata. A blessin' from God."

The woman assumed to be his mother scowled.

Some of the men started to drift away.

But the freak's wispy voice called them back: "You ain't seen all the stigmata."

They pressed closer again, watching as he awkwardly unbuttoned his shirt. "Like I told you, I ain't got no holes in my hands or feet, 'cause Yeshua didn't have none. But he did have another wound, that most folks don't know about. I got it too."

The woman helped him slip his apparently crippled left arm out of the shirt - revealing a second blue-stained bandage, this one on his upper arm. She gently removed the dressing, letting them see that this wound was also open and bleeding. By the time it was rebandaged, the visibly pale young man had to lie down again, and rest for a few minutes before he could explain.

No one left.

When he was able to sit up - once again needing help - he told them, "Yeshua's arm got cut by accident, when he tried to take the sword away from Cephas."

Several rubes said "Huh?" One asked, "Who's See-fus?"

"His name was Shimon, but Yeshua called him Cephas -"

The woman cut in with an exasperated snort. "Peter," she translated. "Simon Peter. Jesus called him a name meanin' 'rock,' an' in Jewish, it was Cephas."

"Saint Peter?" The questioner seemed more confused than before. "What was Saint Peter doin' with a sword? An' if he had one, why was Jesus tryin' to take it away from him?"

"It's actually in the Bible that he had it," the freak told them. "When Yeshua's enemies came to arrest him, Cephas whipped out the sword an' cut a man's ear off.

"But the rest o' the story ain't in the Bible. Yeshua didn't want no bloodshed. An' he didn't want Cephas misusin' that sword, nohow! So he tried to grab it. But he made a fast movement that Cephas warn't expectin', an' Cephas accidentally cut him.

"Cephas felt bad about that, o' course, but he thought it was a minor thing. He didn't understand. If Yeshua hadn't died the next day, that wound never woulda healed."

"Why?" came from a dozen throats.

" 'Cause it warn't made by no ordinary blade. The sword had been used to behead Yochanan."

Rolling her eyes, the woman murmured, "John the Baptist."

"Someone who admired Yochanan got the sword to his followers," the freak went on. "To them, it was a sacred relic. They came to understand that Yeshua was Yochanan's successor - the next Prophet. So they gave him the sword. An' he let Cephas, his chief disciple, have the honor o' carryin' it."

After a long silence, someone said slowly,"You know all this 'cause God revealed it to you."

"Yep."

"Why? What made you so special?"

A weary shrug. "I got no idea."

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The rubes gradually realized they'd seen and heard the entire "show," and walked away, arguing among themselves.

"It's gotta be true. How could he have blue blood if God hadn't touched him?"

"Bullshit. He may have wounds that won't heal 'cause o' some disgustin' medical condition. He puts blue coloring in 'em, like what's used to color cake frosting. An' he's made up good stories to go with the wounds."

"But hey, I remember now that the stuff about Peter cuttin' a man's ear off really is in the Bible. An' when I first heard it, I wondered why Jesus's chief disciple woulda been totin' a sword around."

"If you don't accept the Bible as the inspired Word o' God, you got no need to believe somethin' that unlikely. But if you do accept it as inspired, you gotta believe all of it. Includin' the nails in hands an' feet, an' the death by crucifixion!"

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Ruthie noted with a sigh that - as usual - none of the men had left a tip. Not because they hadn't been interested in what they were seeing and hearing, but because they were too absorbed in mulling it over and discussing it to think about money.

_Thank God we got Gabe to support us._ Gabriel's strongman act was as successful as ever with this new carnival - though he couldn't understand why he'd been rechristened "Hercules," and he kept forgetting the alias and not responding when people spoke to him. _If only there was no more than that wrong with Ben..._

She blamed herself. After the debacle of New Canaan - Sofie and Jonesy missing and presumed dead, other innocents known dead, the incredible final twist of learning that Justin Crowe was still alive - Ben had wanted nothing more than to turn his face to the wall and die. Ruthie had refused to let him. She'd actually force-fed him until he gave up and stopped fighting her. But she thought now that it might have been more merciful to let him go.

As soon as he was well enough, he'd insisted on leaving Carnivale so as not to put Samson and his other friends in danger. Ruthie, with Gabriel in tow, had loyally accompanied him - as nurse, not as the lover she longed to be. He hadn't resisted; he couldn't deny that he needed her.

She'd been stunned when he joined up with another carnival, as a freak. "There ain't no way I can fight Crowe right now," he explained, "so I don't want him findin' me. The last thing he'll expect is that I'd leave one carnival an' do somethin' as obvious as hookin' up with another. Besides, he's such a proud man, it'll never occur to him that an Avataric Prophet could stoop to exhibitin' his blue blood as a carny freak."

It hadn't taken Ruthie long to realize that Ben was "exhibiting" himself - debasing himself - out of self-loathing. Seeking, on some level, to punish himself for his failure in New Canaan.

That was bad enough. But lately, he'd changed. He'd hit on the idea of presenting his wounds as "stigmata," then come to seem genuinely proud of them. _Maybe he's got a need to think of himself as somethin' more than a failure...but it can't be good to live in a fantasy world. _And he added more embellishments to the Bible stories with every telling. Ruthie couldn't hear them without shuddering. _Where did he get them Jewish names from, anyway?_

Now, as she helped him back to their tent, she cautiously broached the subject that was troubling her. "Ben? You ain't startin' to believe that stuff, are you? About your wounds bein' stigmata?"

He gave her a reproachful look. "Ruthie! O' course I got real stigmata! I don't lie - about anythin'."

_Maybe he's afraid we'll be overheard,_ she told herself. So she waited till they were inside the tent, and she'd done all she could to make him comfortable in their one upholstered armchair.

Then she tried again. "C'mon, Ben. We're alone now, so you can level with me. You don't really believe in the 'stigmata,' do you?"

" 'Course I do. An' I thought you did, too. I'm disappointed in you, Ruthie."

She took a deep, steadying breath. "Ben. You made this stuff up. That wound in your 'side' ain't in the same place as Jesus's wound -"

"How do _you_ know?"

"Listen to me! You made up an explanation for not havin' wounds in your hands an' feet. An' then you made up a story 'bout Jesus havin' a wound on his arm. At the time, you _told me_ you were makin' it all up."

He wasn't fazed. "I thought I was makin' it up," he acknowledged. "Now I know better."

She saw something in his eyes that she'd seen before, in other eyes. It had always frightened her.

Quiet, unshakable...fanaticism.

But she wasn't about to give up. "Do you remember how you got them wounds? They didn't appear miraculously, like all the stigmata I've read about. You were damn near killed in a battle with Justin Crowe!"

If he'd forgotten the battle, he didn't let it show. "That was part o' God's plan, Ruthie." He spoke as if he were explaining something to a slow child. "Crowe was God's tool, His instrument for givin' me the stigmata. An' like I told the rubes, I got the only real ones."

She cursed under her breath. "Okay, so you have these wounds...an' you say now that you didn't make up the story 'bout Peter accidentally cuttin' Jesus. Where do you think you got it from? Do you really believe it came directly from God?"

He pondered that for a few seconds. "Maybe not _direct_ from Him, but by way o' my boon. Could be I'm rememberin' things a little at a time, secrets passed down through the line o' Prophets."

He'd already told her about boons...and this idea seemed sensible enough that it gave her pause. _But if there was always someone who knew stories like the ones about Peter's sword, for two thousand years, wouldn't they o' told enough other people along the way that legends woulda got started?_

_Well, maybe they did. There could be legends floatin' around that I never heard of..._

But the thought of boons reminded her of other things he'd told her about Avatars in the aftermath of New Canaan.

"Ben, this stuff you've been tellin' the rubes..." She hesitated, but she had to go on. "It sounds to me like what you're really sayin' is that John the Baptist, Jesus, an' Longinus were all Avatars. Prophets o' Light. Jesus wasn't able to get a boon from John, but the anointed blade was passed on to him. An' for whatever it was worth, Longinus did get a boon from Jesus. Do you mean all that? Seriously?"

He showed no sign of surprise at her having caught his hints. "O' course I mean it," he said calmly. "Like I told you before, I don't lie."

"But Jesus couldn't o' been an Avatar!" _Will I be doin' more damage to him if I shoot down one o' his crazy ideas? God help me, I can't stop myself._

She took a deep breath, then said steadily, "You've told me that after an Avatar is born, his mother becomes barren. And goes crazy. But it's clear in the Bible - well, clear to everyone but Catholics - that Jesus had younger brothers an' sisters. An' no one has ever suggested his mother was crazy. The Catholics would be the last people to accept that!"

Ben looked at her with sad, almost pitying eyes. The thought that flashed through her mind was, _Like he's about to tell me someone killed my puppy._

"Okay," he said, "here's the truth. Yochanan was Yeshua's father. An' by the time they met, they both knew it.

"The only thing the Bible got right is that Yeshua's mother was related to Yochanan. What really happened is that when Yochanan was about fifteen, he got a relative pregnant. A very close relative - niece or sister. At the time, he didn't know what he'd done. An' he couldn't o' married her, anyway. So a man named Yosef was persuaded - hell, he was probably paid - to marry the girl.

"After she gave birth to Yeshua, she went crazy. Stark ravin' mad. So Yosef divorced her an' sent her back to her family, let them take care o' her. He married again, an' his second wife was the mother of his younger kids. It was them raised Yeshua. But Yeshua thought it was cruel that Yosef had divorced his ma - that's why, in his preachin', he condemned divorce."

He sat back, folded his arms, and stared at Ruthie as if defying her to dispute anything he'd said.

She stared at him, stupefied.

At last she choked out, "H-how long have you believed all that? Did you just 'remember' it this minute?"

"I know things," he said calmly. "I know so many things that I can't tell you how long I've known any particular one."

Ruthie shuddered. "I liked you better when you didn't know so many things." _Or imagine you knew them._

He shrugged.

And she realized that was the reaction she'd expected. _Oh, Ben..._

_Truth is, I got no personal knowledge o' whether the Virgin Mary went stark ravin' mad._

_But I'm afraid someone I love is headed that way._

_Movin' fast._

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The End


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